


Left Intact My Animal Heart

by deathwailart



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: F/M, Green Pact, Implied Cannibalism, Open Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:10:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3158990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Farkas knows that Brónach is a thief and assassin, that she likes to hunt down Thalmor and keeps to the ways of her people and he still loves her.  She's not quite sure what to do with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Left Intact My Animal Heart

Farkas knows who she is; for all that he says his brother got the smarts, he's not stupid. He doesn't go poking around in her business but word travels, whispers and rumours that follow and the armour is displayed in one of houses she rarely stays in. They're married but it's rare they share more than a bed, Farkas happiest in Jorrvaskr, Brónach unable to settle anywhere although Whiterun is the hold she spends most time in, even more than Riften. In Riften she's just there for guild work and then she's off again. Whiterun has a forge she can use but Adrianna is almost a friend and the Drunken Huntsman is boasts kinsmen and she is so glad to be around fellow Bosmer, to speak their tongue together eating red red meat. She washes the smell from her hands and mouth before she goes to Farkas. No more beast blood in him and even then he never shared the love of it, he probably only ever tasted the flesh of men or mer in a fight. Brónach is Bosmer, Green Pact Bosmer, strict as she can be when it comes to her own person, even so far from home. Maybe if they were together more then he'd mind. Maybe it would take on a life, skulking in the shadow of every sideways glance and unsaid word like Brónach does. Brónach the thief and assassin. Brónach the Dragonborn. Brónach of the many titles that also include Harbinger and somehow worthy and maybe that swings it. The Companions are his world and she leads them for whatever that's worth when they all lead themselves really. Y'ffre, maybe it's love because it would explain a lot but Brónach doesn't know what to do with love. Not that kind of love and even then, the idea of it belongs to a hazy time before. Valenwood when she had a family of more than just her and a father keeping the old ways and simply surviving. Now she loves loosing arrows into throats, the heavy weight of coin at her hip, dead Thalmor left out for the wild beasts. She cares as much as she is able to care for Farkas; he has her back, he can hunt, he coaxes out her rare laughs and smiles, he doesn't press when she says nothing for days and disappears off to get on with her life. He doesn't begrudge her the company of others either, same as she doesn't with him; if there's something Skyrim and Valenwood share, it's that you might die at any moment so you take everything life offers you. He's a good man. An honest man. Both have been lacking in her life.  
  
At least he enjoys the wilds and so often she tells him to come out, come with her and away from Jorrvaskr and Whiterun, to sleep beneath overhangs from the mountains dripping with ice, in cleared out caves and ruins, roasting meat over a fire. She has so many camps burned into her memory made up of her own tents and those she's discovered then claimed, by the places she's marked on her map as particularly good hunting grounds for more than just animals. She hunts better than he does (she likes to hunt with Aela best, Aela lives and breathes it same as her) but he's no slouch though he brings his own bread and vegetables, his own ale or mead. She doesn't drink here, it's too risky but she explained fermented Bosmer drinks to him once and it was worth the bitter pain of her memories to watch him twist his face up and gag like a child. Once he jokingly called her vampire but she had tensed and he had never made the remark again. Her ways are her ways, she's fought hard to keep them. The beast blood calms in the open spaces rather than the claustrophobic holds where she can feel every eye on her. Open spaces like tonight where she stretches animal skins taut over the exposed half of a mammoth's ribs, the fire crackling before her. When he pulls her close he makes a space for her, kisses her with those big hands heavy on her hips, so gentle in ways she doesn't know how to ask for. She feels more breakable, not physically, she's just as strong as him albeit in different ways, when she's with him, Farkas with his easy smiles and big warm eyes, gentle and _giving_.  
  
He knows who she is and what she is but still he gathers her up and sometimes the kisses and the way he holds her make her squirm and sigh more than when he's inside her or settled between her thighs.  
  
He watches her from the fire when she slips her skin – after she saw him do it once she _ran_ , she avoided Whiterun for weeks, didn't go back to the Companions for months, remembering the thing her mother became when the shamans performed their rites to repel the Thalmor – and he says nothing beyond complaints about her smiling like wet dog when she's back and her again. She'll cure herself one day but it's something, to go back and forth, something she doesn't have the words for and she likes how it feels to clench her jaw around a throat and _pull_.  Farkas knows about that. About knives in the dark slipping between ribs when she hisses 'hail Sithis' into ears as the body she holds lets out a punctured gasp. He knows that nothing is safe from her fingers, no lock or safe, chest or pocket, that there is a chest of stolen objects to be passed to the guild or fences. He knows that she comes to him with mer blood that isn't hers still lingering in her mouth. That in the time apart from him she'll have lain with others, friends and strangers alike.  
  
So she supposes he loves her and that one day, when the world is less mad maybe, when the Thalmor are a shadow of what they were and when she slays her own wolf and it's only her and the dragon souls under her skin, she'll be able to love him back better or know what to do with it. For now there is Farkas and his big hands, the beast blood calm and his warmth against hers, open sky above them.


End file.
